Electric Arches

Eve L. Ewing is a writer, scholar, artist, and educator from Chicago. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Nation, The Atlantic, and many other venues. She is a sociologist at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.

“Reading Eve L. Ewing’s Electric Arches is such an awakening and active experience— this book time travels, makes myth, immerses, paints, opens pathways. This is a living and breathing document, memoir and map, guidebook and scroll. 'Recall this,' writes Ewing in 'Shea Butter Manifesto,' both as invitation and as spellbinding command. I’m awestruck by the rigor and intimacy of this book, by its insistent love for both black past and black future. Ewing leaves no unnamed ritual uncovered, no implicit idiom uncelebrated. This book is a gift, a visual and lyrical offering to be treasured as gospel.”–Morgan Parker, author of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé

• true storiesArrival Day the first time [a re-telling] The Device four boys on Ellis [a re-telling] Sestina with Matthew Henson’s Fur Suittrue stories about Koko Taylor another time [a re-telling] Note from LeBron James to LeBron James Excerpts from an interview with Ron Artest how i arrivedoil and waterShea Butter Manifesto why you cannot touch my hair appletree [on blackwomanhood, from and to Erykah Badu] what I mean when I say I’m sharpening my oyster knife To Stacey, as you were Ode to Luster’s Pink Oilone thousand and one ways to touch your own face to the notebook kid Thursday Morning, Newbury Streetletters from the flat landsOn Prince Origin Story fragment Sonnet Chicago is a chorus of barking dogs at the salon montage in a car The Discount Mega Mall (In Memoriam) I come from the fire city Hood Run One Good Time for Marilyn MosbyColumbus Hospital What I Talk About When I Talk About Black Jesus at work with my father Fullerton Avenue Requiem for Fifth Period and the Things That Went On Then untitled anti-elegy I wish for them a mundane life Affirmation